Failure!

Let's start with my failure to complete my October challenge.

Road Games - Jamie Lee Curtis and Stacy Keach star in this Aussie made tribute to Hitchcock, channeling Rear Window through the eyes of a ex-pat trucker in the outback, on the trail of a man in a green van that may or may not be killing female hitchhikers. This film was quite spectacular. Its smart, clever, and very well done. The cinematography was quite inventive at times, and Stacy Keach, well, he's charismatic and a marvel to watch. Which is great, because a lot of the film is him in the cab of a truck talking to his dingo (or himself).

The Horde - I was excited about watching this. It wasn't as great as I'd hoped it would be, it did lag at times, but it does feature some great combat sequences. This film will from now on be credited with adding a splash of hand to hand combat to zombie films. Yes, that's right, people throwing down with zombies. Its pretty awesome.

So, that's only 16 films out of 31. Failure! I may have actually watched more, but that was last month and my memory isn't that good. Which is a really good reason to write it more frequently.

And whilst I did fail at that, I have succeeded on one front. That of training. My schedule does not seem to mesh with that of Golden Harmony anymore , which is a shame, because honestly that is one of my favourite martial arts schools of all time, so while I bide my time until our schedules align, I have instead started to take some good, old fashioned Muay Thai kick boxing at TKMT. Its conveniently located a 15 minute walk south of me. My ultimate goal, to learn Muay Boran. Muay Thai on its own doesn't hold that much interest to me. The classes will, and are, getting me into fantastic shape, and it is sharpening my punching skills, but I have always found older forms more fascinating. You're physically learning a piece of history, channeling the old ways through physicality. I find that far more satisfying than just repeating the same cycle of punches and kicks. But so far, Muay Thai is kicking my ass. Granted, I am not in prime physical shape, but I don't think I've thrown that many punches in my life. The kicking I can handle, Tae Kwon Do trained me well, I can throw kicks till the cows come home, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of punches, well, that is pain. A pain I love and need.